


Quietly They Go

by Maidenjedi



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:18:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."  Spoilers for Season 6's "Tithonus."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quietly They Go

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Fellig's darkroom, which was more of a dark space than an actual room, smelled of chemicals and something ripe, decaying. Scully's nose wrinkled in familiar recoil, as it did when she walked into morgues and sometimes emergency rooms.

There was no room to hide a body, and she had already come to understand that Fellig did not kill but simply observed. So the stench of death must have been in her imagination. Either way, this was a close and unpleasant place.

Perhaps her senses were playing tricks, after all. So many pictures of the dead and dying, pouring blood captured in motion.

One in particular caught her attention. The picture was black and white, fading a bit from time but still remarkably clear. A woman, on the floor, dressed in flapper garb that was too accurate to be anything but authentic. Her eyes were open, and her head lay in a pool of blood.

Something about the woman's vulnerable position, maybe, or the expression of fear in her eyes, fascinated Scully. She traced her fingers along the edges, Fellig's words falling on half-deaf ears as she thought about the woman in the picture.

What had it been like, to die like that? Shot in the back of the head, expecting to hear the gunshot first but falling on the floor instead.

Scully's stomach twisted painfully. That was what happened to Melissa.

She hadn't seen her sister until Melissa was in a hospital bed, so close to death that her skin had been cool to the touch and everyone who walked by gave Scully a kind of pitying glance. At the time she'd felt those gazes were ones of blame.

Did the woman in the picture have anything in common with Melissa, besides their gruesome and tragic ends? Did the woman in the picture leave behind a sister, who maybe should have died in her place?

Scully's throat felt dry, and the room was getting warmer. She wanted to take her coat off, ask Fellig for some water, and neither of those things was an option. She saw the name on the photograph - Lewis Brady - and it somehow grounded her. Jolted her from a guilt trip she thought she only had when her mother's eyes teared up at the mention of Melissa.

She excused herself, unsure why she stood upon any kind of ceremony in Fellig's presence.

She called Mulder, his voice lulling her back from her terrible, dark thoughts as it always did. That's why she was still with him, why she had not taken any of the transfers they'd offered her or that Skinner had privately told her she should take. She couldn't move to Utah, or Oklahoma, or even someplace like Hawaii and not...not....

"Scully?"

"I have to go, Mulder."

When Ritter fired, she didn't hear the gunshot. She heard her own sharp intake of breath (was she going to scream? call out? protest?) and then she was on the floor, something warm and sticky coating her throat. Ritter was saying something, pressing on her stomach, and she wished he wouldn't because it hurt.

The room was bright, so bright she could only sort of make out shapes. A table, the open door, a person on the floor next to her. He had a camera and she wanted to shout at him to put it down.

The words stuck somewhere, in her throat or maybe they hadn't even gotten that far. She was confused and when he did put the camera down she thought maybe he'd heard her.

But then she saw *him*.

Not completely, just a shade, something in the corner of her eye. She averted her gaze, or tried to. No, I won't look, I won't see.

But part of her was curious. Melissa had seen him. She wanted to know what her sister saw.

"Do you see him?"

Fellig's voice was far away, like he was playing telephone with a tincan and string.

She couldn't say anything! It wouldn't come out! As she tried, she felt a gush of something warm on her lap. She smelled blood and felt her stomach heave just a little.

Because it was her blood, and this was the end. Fellig had said so.

She hadn't said goodbye to Mulder.

"Close your eyes," Fellig insisted.

That was something she could do. She was tired, so very tired.

Was it over?

\--

"The doctors say you're making the fastest recovery they've ever seen."

After Mulder left, Scully put her hand over her bandage and stared at the ceiling.

What was it Clyde Bruckman had said, all those years ago? "You don't." Don't what, she'd wanted to say. Don't die? Don't feel Death breathing down my neck?

Death had visited her life too often, too many times. He'd looked into her father's eyes, into Melissa's. She tried hard not to imagine Death in the room with Emily. He'd tried a few times to take Mulder, and damn it, he'd succeeded in taking Mulder's father. She was sick of it, and she would not stand for it.

"You were a lucky lady, Miss Scully." The nurse who changed her bandage was almost condescending, taunting. He'll be back, the unspoken jab. The undeniable truth.

She was not ready. And she'd be damned if she'd let *him* take anyone else.

 

\------

END


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